2. 'Survivor'-- Iraq edition. Contestants dodge car bombs and bullets, and survival depends on figuring out which one of 50 people in a crowd is the suicide bomber. And if you guess right-- the next day you get to wake up and do it again.

3. 'Survivor'-- come to America. Contestants begin just across the border in northern Mexico with no documents and a gallon of lukewarm water, and have to make it across the Arizona desert in June. If they get apprehended by border patrol agents they are disqualified. The winner ends up not only getting to an American city, but finding a job and getting hired.

4. 'Survivor'-- prison edition. Contestants are locked up in a maximum security prison and have to come out alive without having been raped, crippled or otherwise terrorized.

5. 'Survivor'-- Putin edition. Contestants are hunted by ex-KGB agents and have to avoid being 'eliminated.'

6. 'Survivor'-- on the streets. Contestants must live on the streets of America or in homeless shelters, and try to avoid being murdered by bored middle class teenagers who are killing time by beating homeless people with baseball bats.

7. 'Survivor'-- gang edition. Contestants have contracts put on them and have to decipher gang grafitti to figure out by whom and how they are being targetted. The winner gets jumped in.

Have you read Steven Johnson's "Everything Bad Is Good for You"? It us Survivor as one of its examples of how even the "trashy" popular TV of today makes your mind exercise all sorts of muscles that might otherwise lie dormant.